By Neto Baptiste
Modern day cricket is designed for the success of cricketers today and young players should have little to no excuse as to why they cannot make it to the next level.
This is the view of former national and Leeward Islands cricket captain, Wilden Cornwall, who said that with the opportunities available in cricket today, players have a much better chance of making a living through the game.
“A little bit more cricket is playing now than when I used to play because I only got one season of two-round cricket, so these little things now where players are getting a monthly salary to play and look after their cricket plus a match fee and these things never happened in my time,” he said.
Cornwall, who is the assistant coach of the Leeward Islands Hurricanes, said the system has changed drastically at the regional level and that players are more comfortable.
“I think a lot of things have been put in place now for players to perform. We have the franchise system in place and we never had that to our disposal, so I think that now, the players should be getting better. We saw some good performances in the Super50 last year, we didn’t really do well this year in the Four Day Championships but there are some talents around and if we harness those talents that we have in the Leeward Islands and a lot in Antigua as well, we could do well in regional cricket for a good while,” he said.
Cornwall, in 2010, captained the Leeward Islands senior team to what was their last regional title when they were crowned joint winners of the Regional 50 overs competitions alongside Barbados.